Jami Gertz Quotes

In Jewish tradition the Talmud is said to have been given on Sinai.

I study Torah all the time.

One of the stranger things about me is that I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I went to a yeshiva until I was thirteen years old and spoke fluent Hebrew.

Judaism has always been a strong interest of mine. My two sons speak Hebrew and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

I had one of those farcical bar mitzvahs where they spell out the words phonetically on index cards, and you don't even know what you're saying.

I was bar mitzvahed, which was hard. I feel it was the hardest thing I ever had to do; harder than making a movie. It was a lot of studying, you know. I wasn't a perfect Hebrew reader, and also, they say when you're reading your Torah portion, you're not supposed to memorize it. It turned out very tricky.

Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.

In Judaism, there are 613 biblical commandments, and the Talmud says that the chief commandment of all is study.

I was raised in an observant Jewish household, so for me, Hebrew prayers - the sounds, the sunlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows of a synagogue - bring my father back to me as surely as if he were sitting next to me, my head pressed against his shoulder.

I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.

I remember my father, who was 'somebody' in the synagogue, bringing home with him one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the Passover meal. These patriarchal manners I remember well, although there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence which was somewhat comic.

Judaism is in all my books.

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

The Talmud. the compendium of Jewish Law. is pretty much a bunch of dudes contradicting on another...

I was bar mitzvahed at Beth Shalom, and I had trouble. I didn't quite get it all.

All of my friends on the street we're Jewish. I went to a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs. I even learned a little Hebrew.

I went to bar mitzvahs as a kid. I had a lot of classmates who are Jewish.

My brothers were rabbis. My grandfather was a rabbi.

My grandmother was a nanny for an Orthodox Jewish family, and she would come home and tell us about that.

The Talmud: Heart's Blood of the Jewish Faith.

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

I never thought I'd play an orthodox Jewish man.

In a bar mitzvah, you do the candle-lighting ceremony with the cake. Every birthday, the cake is the big moment.

Jesus was born a Jew, and he died a Jew. It never occurred to him to establish a new religion. He never crossed himself: he had no reason to. He never set one foot in a church. He went to synagogue.

Yeshivas barely teach any Bible, only Talmud.